rfi : timestretching

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uh, turned up to the popular music course I've been unattending for a month & discovered there's a (short) essay due tomorrow where we have to

choose any popular music entity since 1950 that experienced or produced a profound impact through Music Technology and discuss the impact of that technology on the group concerned and on its offspring.

so, since most of the other kids will write about TEH ROXX0R, I figured I'll try & do something on ardkore/jungle; probably timestretching. has anyone got any links/etc to interviews/articles from around that time that could be useful? it's briefly mentioned by Simon Reynolds (& uh in Tom's piece on "Terminator")

also, which tracks should I use as examples? I'll start with :
Metalheadz - "Terminator"

― Ess Kay (esskay), Wednesday, 21 May 2003 23:22 (twenty-two years ago)

4 Hero were oms of the first to use timestretching. If you can dig it up that should be a reference point (I think on Parallel Universes). You can always try and search the archives of the IDM-L on hyperreal or wherever they're kept for some timestretching anecdotes, perhaps. Funki Porcini used timestretching like a madman on practically every record he put out. Err. I'm afraid I can't think of much else at the moment. Oh! Plug - Drum & Bass For Papa.

― Millar (Millar), Wednesday, 21 May 2003 23:42 (twenty-two years ago)

Roni Size's "Timestretch" is a good example. Goldie talked mad shit about whatever he was doing on Timeless (in Energy Flash, but also in virtually any interview you can find with him) but since a good part of it is blatant self-promotion I don't know how useful his babbling may be.

― Alex in SF (Alex in SF), Wednesday, 21 May 2003 23:58 (twenty-two years ago)

thanks for the info - looks like that IDM-L list doesn't have a search function, but I'll see if I can manually download anything . . .

btw, what other "techniques" were pioneered/famously used around this time? pitchshifting, um, quantizing (sp?)?

― Ess Kay (esskay), Thursday, 22 May 2003 00:06 (twenty-two years ago)

beatmunging.

word to EOS.

― Mike Taylor (mjt), Thursday, 22 May 2003 00:19 (twenty-two years ago)

rufige kru (who are/were of course goldie) were the first (i think) to use timestretching (on "terminator"...1992?) in jungle. of course, the same technique was also - in a way - the death knell of hardcore, since it was what allowed him to make diane charlemange's voice not oscillate into chipmunk territory on "angel" (1993), and opened the gates for every jazzy producer which followed. since goldie was working A&R for reinforced at the time, timestretching of breaks became something of a house style for darkcore (cf. 4hero's "journey from the light", 1993.)

no idea what they actually used to produce it but this heat's "24 track loop" has a sound eerily prescient of darkcore, 15 years early.

― jess (dubplatestyle), Thursday, 22 May 2003 01:25 (twenty-two years ago)

thanks for the info. technology can have a big impact, right.

next idiot question - the "influence" of jungle on timbaland (despite not having heard any, etc) was . . . what, exactly? something to do with syncopation, right?

― Ess Kay (esskay), Thursday, 22 May 2003 01:37 (twenty-two years ago)

& also - how exactly do the drums in omni trio's "renegade snares (foul play vip remix)" sound like that?

― Ess Kay (esskay), Thursday, 22 May 2003 02:10 (twenty-two years ago)

Ess-Kay - be careful to distinguish between timestretching (increasing the length of a section of audio without changing its pitch) and pitch shifting (changing the pitch of audio without changing its length). Personally I reckon timestretching didn't have much impact beyond increasing the timbral palette (that aliased sound you get when you stretch the audio too far). A better approach might be to look at the Akai s1000 the sampler of choice for many jungle producers that had all those effects, or maybe digital audio in general.

― eddddddddddddd, Thursday, 22 May 2003 02:28 (twenty-two years ago)

Here's something you might find interesting, if not useful. "9 Beet Stretch" is Beethoven's 9th Symphony stretched out to a 24 hour period. I haven't listened to the whole thing (yet), but the sections I have heard have been magnificent, ethereal, and frankly, amazing.

http://www.notam02.no/9/

― Gazelle, Thursday, 22 May 2003 02:41 (twenty-two years ago)

pitchshifting w/o time change and timestretching w/o pitch change bot huse the same general set of algorithmic xforms - so in either case you're dealing with the same changeover in music technology.

― Millar (Millar), Thursday, 22 May 2003 03:53 (twenty-two years ago)

The Akai S1000 was the first hardware sampler to offer the time stretch function. It came out around 1989 or 1990. When people talk about time stretching in this context they probably mean that slowed-down, metallic, robotised speech thing. That effect was presented by some jungle producers as a weird, advanced use of technology but is in fact the standard result when 'misusing' the settings on the Akai (from memory a high percentage amount with the setting on 'constant' - or something like that - instead of 'intelligent').

― David (David), Thursday, 22 May 2003 05:19 (twenty-two years ago)

right, looks like the Akai S1000 will be the angle of investigation (found a few interviews with, say, Liam Howlett mentioning it) . . .

(out of curiosity, does anyone know when Cubase came along & the impact that had?)

― Ess Kay (esskay), Thursday, 22 May 2003 07:07 (twenty-two years ago)

Chronic Breaks by D'Cruze has some really good timestretching too.

― M Carty (mj_c), Thursday, 22 May 2003 13:40 (twenty-two years ago)

i once came across an old interview with Massive Attack circa Blue Lines where they referred to timestretching, obviously if they used it it must have been in a fairly subtle way (as the manufacturers no doubt intended)

strictly speaking isn't what the junglist used timestretching for, ie. speeding up a vocal sample to make it fit faster beats, without it going up in pitch, actually time-compression? whereas timestretching as actual stretching is yer raggavoice stretched out like taffy until it cracks apart all metallic and Dalek-y as per dred bass 'dead dred' and 10 thousand speed garage records (and 'rockafella skank')

― simon r, Thursday, 22 May 2003 14:40 (twenty-two years ago)

say my name, say my name
http://www-gap.dcs.st-and.ac.uk/~history/BigPictures/Fourier.jpeg

(fourier)

― Elliott Brennan (ebb), Thursday, 22 May 2003 15:00 (twenty-two years ago)

"The S950 was the first Akai sampler to implement time stretching, enabling you to alter sample length without altering pitch. Considering the S950's continued popularity as a drum-loop sampler, that capability proved crucial to its success. If you stray too far from the original sample length, recordings begin to sound a little metallic and artificial, which might be the result you're aiming for."

from Electronic Musician article.

― arch Ibog (arch Ibog), Thursday, 22 May 2003 17:00 (twenty-two years ago)

also, Simon, I believe "time-streching", despite what the name literally implies, covers both lengthening and shortening sample times.

Here's the relevant section from the AKAI S950 manual: (note how they explicitly use altering drum loops as an example--and the S950 was released in 1988!)

Timestretch is a facility that allows you to either lengthen or shorten a sample without changing that samples pitch over a factor of 999% (i.e a one second sample can be stretched to a maximum length of nearly 10 seconds). There are many uses for this technique. Firstly, it is possible to change the tempo of a sampled drum loop without changing its pitch. Alternatively, it is possible to change the pitch of the drum loop and then change it back to its original tempo. It can also be used to lengthen samples so that, as you go higher up the keyboard, the sample length remains constant. It is also possible to lengthen or shorten backing vocals which could be 'spun in' in an extended remix.

― arch Ibog (arch Ibog), Thursday, 22 May 2003 17:08 (twenty-two years ago)

The S950 was the first Akai sampler to implement time stretching

Oh yes I'd forgotten about that one. The setting I mentioned earlier was 'cyclic' (not 'constant'). Recommended in the manual for use on notes of constant pitch rather than anything with rhythm or changing pitch, but actually gives the classic time stretched spoken ragga vocal effect (with high percentage).

out of curiosity, does anyone know when Cubase came along & the impact that had?

Cubase came out around 1989, I think, on the Atari ST. Although other systems were just as (if not more) powerful (eg Emagic/C Lab Notator - the forerunner to Logic and used by 4Hero), Cubase enabled a more visual/graphic approach to programming beats and copying patterns. Actually there were already programs that offered a broadly similar approach (eg Master Tracks Pro and Performer) but they were not popular in Europe.

Where Cubase had an additional impact was in the cracked copies that became widely available. This and the prices of 2nd hand Atari STs dropping through the floor as professionals changed platform c.1993-95 opened up music production to a lot of people who would previously not have had access to it.

― David (David), Thursday, 22 May 2003 21:06 (twenty-two years ago)

THE S950 rocked. especially the loop alternate back / forwards thing.

― Savin All My Love 4 u (Savin 4ll my (heart) 4u), Thursday, 22 May 2003 22:48 (twenty-two years ago)

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